Screaming and hunger.

Kids begin to scream about 5pm because they are hungry. I offer various tide-them-over things to eat. Alli refuses those and continues to scream for most of the time that I am cooking. I pick her up when I can but have to put her down so i won't burn her with what i'm doing. more screaming. when i finally manage to put the food on the table one is screaming because he wants-and-can't-have: chocolate milk, a movie, anything but dinner. I try to put Alli in her chair, because all throughout this i have been racing the clock of her hunger, and what happens? She screams and goes rigid and will not go in her chair. So I tell her it's dinner or in her bed. She responds with screaming. When i return to the kitchen from putting her in her crib, Simon is screaming about something. So now (5:38) they are both in their room screaming and i am not eating the fabulous vitamin filled meal i concocted, but i am blogging and ignoring the childrens. Simon just came in and said "Mom, I think Alli's ready to be out." Okay . . .

They are good kids--they just get stuck on scream and whine. There were a few good moments during dinner prep when i put in the children's songbook cd to keep them from wrestling on the couches (a.k.a making alli scream every 30 seconds) and they started to look at library books. But it didn't last long enough to get us picture-perfect to the table. The report from Simon:
"Mom. I stopped crying."
A few minutes later,
"Mom, Alli didn't stop crying yet."

Guess I'll go serve them the dinner now. They don't like it warm anyway. ;)